Surfing the cusp of pop-culture
First, as requested by some of my commenters, a picture of the oh-so-cute itty-bitty Silkie eggs:
Of course, you can’t really tell how itty-bitty and cute they are; it’s the two light ones up top, and they are about half (or less) the size of the others. We’re getting about one Silkie egg a day, and still four of the other girls’ eggs daily.
This actually has something to do with my title. We are, it seems, right on the cutting edge of popular culture. Once again, we have dipped into the Ur, the Jungian gestalt of the United States, by having chickens.
There is a “Chicken Underground” in Madison, Wisconsin. There are urban coop-ists in New York City. The website BackyardChickens.com logs 6 million page views per month and has more than 18,000 members in its forums.
Whocoodanode?
Of course, this is not cheap. One thinks of chickens as cheap and easy, but, alas, they are not. One can compare our coops and the dotter’s egg money similarly to, say, the U.S. agriculture system. The government subsidizes the infrastructure (OmegaMom and OmegaDad purchase and build the coop). The government subsidizes the ongoing process (OmegaDad visits the local feed store once every month to buy chicken feed and fluff). In return, the farmer (that would be OmegaDotter) takes care of the livestock (with help from the gummint–a constant reminder to go out and check the chickens twice daily), cleans the coops (with intense help from the gummint), sells the eggs to neighbors, the government (Chez OmegaMom) and government-sponsored entities (that would be people like OmegaDad’s coworkers, who trade frozen fresh-caught halibut or salmon for a few dozen eggs). In the end, everyone is happy and well-fed.
Right?
Anyway, to get a glimpse of this new underworld of chicken lovers, read up on “The Craze for Urban Chickens“. I’m sure that it will be spreading even further, as people decide that keeping chickens and growing gardens helps in this dismal economy.
In the meantime, OmegaMom and OmegaDad can rest assured that, once again, they have their fingers firmly on the pulse of America.
(ETA: This is just too cool. You click and drag the big box of bars over the stripes to the left. Do it slowly. What do you see? I just had to share it as quickly as possible!)
posted in Economy, Livestock and Pets, Pop Culture | 6 Comments
